So with today being Halloween I decided I should review a horror movie, and with my lack of knowledge of the Saw series I decided to pick up this well received film starring Vinnie Jones.

Leon Kauffman [Bradley Cooper] is an aspiring photographer in New York, and he is out on assignment to get some gritty pictures for a showing. He comes upon an interesting subject, Mahogany [Vinnie Jones], who is a butcher who rides the late night trains in the subway.

Now I’m not a big genre fan, especially horror. However, after seeing the previews of this film I just had to see this movie. I’ve always liked Vinnie Jones since he debuted in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels but not for his great acting qualities but more for his overbearing presence on film. I don’t know much about you, but when he was playing Big Nick in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and smacked the roof of a tanning bed into someone’s face while reminding him not to ‘blaspheme’ I realized that he is just a great character, and as long as he sticks within that general ‘hard man’ character I will always love him in movies.

Bradley Cooper was introduced to me via J. J. Abrams tv show Alias and he hasn’t been able to find a stand out role since then for me. He plays more of a stalker role, since you get to see him run around following Vinnie Jones’ character around for the whole movie. Also we get to see his character become obsessed with the butcher and what he’s doing with his nights on the train. He even gets into the conspiracy theory that the butcher is killing people on the train.

I love this movie, but it took the full length before I could confirm my love. The first half hour to forty-five minutes of the movie was great because we were just being introduced to the butcher and we were trying to figure out how crazy he really was, and we were trying to figure out why he was doing this. The greatest part is that we never know why he is doing this until the very end of the movie. Most people will compare Vinnie Jones’ role here to Arnold’s in The Terminator since he never speaks, except for one half of a line, throughout the movie.

The direction here is great. The film is directed by Ryuhei Kitamura [also did Sky High], and he just made so many great choices when shooting the film. I love early when we see Vinnie Jones’ character on the train killing his victims. The camera shows us some of the shots through the train car doors, with the dirty and misty glass we see some great visual shots where the shot is not 100% clear and it creates a sense of suspense as who this mysterious character is.

The best part about this movie – I think I said it already – is the end. I was watching the movie, and kept worrying that the film would fall victim to a recent horror cliché. However, as I’m here to tell you, it doesn’t. I won’t give away the ending, but be prepared to be surprised is all I have to say right now.

Overall, here is another gem to make me have some belief in the fact that all films can be good no matter what genre. Just like The Orphanage did a couple of years ago did, this movie will surprise you and will keep the torture porn fans of recent years pleased also.

IMDB says 6.9/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 67%

I say 8.0/10